Rebtel is an OTT communications company with ambitions of being much more than a cheap international calling service. It has spun off its VoIP and messaging network into a new company that will target mobile developers.

Etsy is one of the quiet successes of the modern Internet. A artisan’s haven (and heaven), it is a global market place that is unique in its mission. It is time to meet Chad Dickerson, its unassuming leader, whose outlook on business is simply human.

The VC behind big European exits like Skype, MySQL and Lovefilm has been arguing that London should play host to more IPOs. Now Robin Klein, one of its high profile partners, is spearheading the attack with an appeal to government, investors and startups themselves.

Skype and Lovefilm backer Index Ventures has just added a new €350 million early stage fund to its arsenal, and now plans to use it to back dozens of companies across Europe, America and Israel over the next three years.

In a move that echoes Amazon’s purchase of Zappos back in 2009, Russian web store Ozon is buying online shoe seller Sapato.ru — a deal that Ozon CEO Maelle Gavet says will turn it into a “powerhouse online retailer”.

It already has a reputation as Europe’s top investor in startups, but now Index Ventures is adding more firepower with the announcement of a €500m new growth fund aimed at making big bets on rapidly-expanding companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Startup WeatherBill has built a business around offering farmers financial protection against weather, but the underlying goal of the company has always been to help companies adapt to a changing climate, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder David Friedberg told me.

Report

Europe’s web scene is now thriving, and we’ve compiled a list featuring some of the best and brightest European web startups — what we’re dubbing the GigaOM Euro 20. Depending on how closely you watch Europe’s online scene, some of these companies may be familiar to you. Others you may not have heard of. But all of them are worth watching closely. In this report, we profile the 20 startups that we feel best represent Europe’s current tech scene. We have organized our list around perception, and as lists go, it is intended to be a guideline rather than a rule book. It’s not exhaustive, and clearly, with such a diverse and vibrant continent as our playing field, it never could be. Companies mentioned in this report include GetJar, Huddle, Made.com and Songkick. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

After years of effort and a long courtship, Photobox and Moonpig — two of Britain’s most venerable startups that print photos, books and greetings cards — are joining forces, with an acquisition that will create what they claim is the world’s leading personalized printing service.

Index Ventures made its name as Europe’s most aggressive venture capital firm — backing Skype, Playfish and others. We caught up with partner Ben Holmes to find out whether the company is preparing for a bubble by opening its first office in the U.S.

Path, the San Francisco-based company that makes a photo sharing app has raised $8.5 million in new investment from KPCB and Index Ventures. That’s a lot of money for a company that has little traction or not even a hint of a business model.

Chartbeat, which offers real-time website analytics, has closed a $3-million Series A round of financing from a group of VCs led by Index Ventures. This is the first external financing the startup has taken after being founded by betaworks, the venture group/incubator run by John Borthwick.

Etsy, the “eBay for crafts,” has raised a new $20-million round of financing — its fifth — according to several reports, as sales at the user-generated site continue to grow rapidly. The funding round is from a group of venture capital funds led by Index Ventures.

In 2006 Moo.com had it all: hype that comes along with top venture investors, a smooth-talking CEO, hot social services as partners and an iconic product. Today Moo is less hip, more low-key — and profitable. Here’s how the company did it.

There is a good likelihood that Skype; its founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis; and a group of private equity investors led by Silver Lake Partners are close to settling their legal disputes, allowing eBay (s EBAY) to sell 65 percent of Skype for about $2 billion. I had first reported the news this past weekend. As part of the settlement, Zennstrom and Friis are likely to get a board representation, and there is some talk of Index Ventures being out of the deal as well.

After spending the past few years pouring money into Facebook applications and me-too social networks, venture firms are starting to invest in infrastructure again, with both hardware and software plays tied to the cloud.